NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE GOES TO DISCOVERERS OF HEPATITIS C VIRUS

Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice were jointly honored for their “decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem,” Daniel Victor reported for the New York Times.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the three scientists, the Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Hepatitis, a blood-borne disease, is a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world, the committee said on Twitter.

The 2019 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. These cellular mechanisms control, for example, the adaptation to high altitudes and how cancer cells manage to hijack oxygen.